Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Mr. Price's cordial hug

I don't know about the rest of you, but I never previously gave any
thought to Fanny Price's drinking _any_ sort of alcoholic drink (did
Rozema show Fanny as drinking at any point in her 1999 adaptation?), but
I stumbled upon a passage today---having found something else in it
which I won't complicate matters by describing here and now----that
caused me to delve into this topic of Fanny and alcoholic beverages for
the first time.

The passage is in Chapter 46, not far from the end of the novel, and
comes right after Fanny reads Edmund's eagerly awaited letter. Fanny is
still exiled in Portsmouth, and after Edmund first reports the bad news
that Maria and Henry have still not yet been located, and further that
Julia has also eloped with Yates, he then abruptly changes course 180
degrees and reports that Sir Thomas has authorized Fanny's return to
Mansfield Park, accompanied by Susan.

Here is Fanny's reaction:

"Never had Fanny more wanted a cordial. Never had she felt such a one as
this letter contained. To-morrow! to leave Portsmouth to-morrow! She
was, she felt she was, in the greatest danger of being exquisitely
happy, while so many were miserable. The evil which brought such good to
her! She dreaded lest she should learn to be insensible of it. "

Never had Fanny more wanted a cordial? This passage is startling (at
least to me) and almost sounds like a cliche, the modern version would
be something like "Never had Fanny more wanted a stiff drink"! But what
then _really_ caught my eye were the words "Never" and "more". Why?
Because, when you pause and think about them, they imply that this is
far from the first time in her still young life that Fanny has wanted a
cordial. It appears, in fact, that Fanny has _often_ wanted a cordial,
going back quite some time in order to justify the word "Never",
presumably to settle her nerves after some nerve-wracking experience or
other.

When you think about it, who _wouldn't_ be driven to consume copious
amounts of alcohol by the lethal cocktail of Sir Thomas and Aunt Norris???

And that fruitful line of inquiry led me to quickly scan through the
text of MP, looking for any _other_ hints lurking there about Fanny's
drinking, to see if I might find some other tantalizing references to
Fanny's relationship with alcohol, and it turned out that Chapter 7 was
the mother lode:

"...if Edmund were not there to mix the wine and water for [Fanny],
would rather go without it than not...."

The above describes Fanny's pouting internal monologue, as she struggles
with her jealous feelings toward Mary and Edmund and their "spirited"
horseback riding adventures. And again, as in the Chapter 46 passage, JA
is subtly careful to hint at an ongoing family tradition of Edmund
mixing wine and water for Fanny to consume, presumably every day or
close to it. But.. I for one was relieved by Fanny's drinking diluted
wine, because, even tiny as she is, she is probably not getting drunk
from it.

But then, later in that same Chapter 7, after the infamous
Fanny-swelters-while-stooping-among-the-roses episode, Fanny imbibes
some wine, and no mention is made of whether Edmund dilutes it or
not--my guess is that he does _not_ :

"Edmund said no more to either lady; but going quietly to another table,
on which the supper-tray yet remained, brought a glass of Madeira to
Fanny, and obliged her to drink the greater part. She wished to be able
to decline it; but the tears, which a variety of feelings created, made
it easier to swallow than to speak."

And perhaps there are other passages in MP in a similar vein which I
have not as yet figured out how to sleuth out, but I think it's now
crystal clear that JA means for us to know that Fanny, for all her prim
and proper ways, is _not_ a teetotaller. Why JA would choose to subtly
underscore this aspect of Fanny is a question I will leave for another
time, but of course anyone who wants to take a stab at it responding to
me now would be most welcome!

Regardless, I did find one _other_ passage in MP which, even though it
does not report any drinking of alocoholic beverages by Fanny,
nontheless, upon close examination, seems to be an integral part of this
particular matrix of covert subtext in Mansfield Park.

This passage, which appears in Chapter 38, describes Fanny's first
reunion with her father in Portsmouth after a decade away:

"With an acknowledgment that he had quite forgot her, Mr. Price now
received his daughter; and having given her a cordial hug, and observed
that she was grown into a woman, and he supposed would be wanting a
husband soon, seemed very much inclined to forget her again. Fanny
shrunk back to her seat, with feelings sadly pained by his language and
his smell of spirits; and he talked on only to his son, and only of the
Thrush, though William, warmly interested as he was in that subject,
more than once tried to make his father think of Fanny, and her long
absence and long journey."

Is it just a coincidence with the Chapter 46 passage I quoted at the
start of this message which reports Fanny's need for a "cordial", that
the hug which Mr. Price gives Fanny is described as "cordial"? Sure it
can mean "cordial" in the sense of "polite", but, given that we hear in
the very next sentence about Mr. Price's "smell of spirits", I think
it's safe to say that JA was having a little darkly ironic fun here,
punning on "cordial" so as to convey, subliminally, that Fanny would
have been most repulsed by her father's smell of spirits at the moment
of that unavoidable hug. A hug which reeked of cordials! And perhaps
part of Fanny's feeling of disgust has some strong whiff of Freudian
repression about it, as she knows that she herself is not averse to
imbibing liquor!

So, I hope you'll agree with me that Mr. Price's cordial hug, which
might at first have seemed uninteresting, turned out to be a "bread
crumb" (or should I say a "shot", as in a shot of liquor?) was worth
considering!

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Thank you, Mary!

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About Me

I'm a 63 year old independent scholar (still) working on a book project about the SHADOW STORIES of Jane Austen's novels (and Shakespeare's plays). I first read Austen in 1995, an American male real estate lawyer, i.e., a Janeite outsider. I therefore never "learned" that there was no secret subtext in her novels. All I did was to closely read and reread her novels, while participating in stimulating online group readings. Then, in 2002, I whimsically wondered whether Willoughby stalked Marianne Dashwood and staged their “accidental” meeting. I retraced his steps, followed the textual “bread crumbs”, and verified my hunch. I've since made numerous similar discoveries about offstage scheming by various characters. In hindsight, it was my luck not only to be a lawyer, but also a lifelong solver of NY Times and other difficult American crossword puzzles. These both trained me to spot complex patterns based on fragmentary data, to interpret cryptic clues of all kinds, and, above all, not to give up until I’ve completed the puzzle--and literary sleuthing Jane Austen's novels (and Shakespeare's plays) is, bar none, the best puzzle solving in the world!